create outline from silhouette.

[juliankaye]

I own both Designer and Photo
How do I turn this graphic into an outline without having to trace it:

[R C-R]

1 hour ago, juliankaye said:

How do I turn this graphic into an outline without having to trace it:

Use another app.

[juliankaye]

Like what app? that's not helpful at all.

[R C-R]

What I mean is there is no auto-trace function in any Affinity app.

There have been many topics discussing the alternatives -- just use the search box at the top of the page to find a sample of them.

[Andy05]

Neither of the Affinity apps has automatic tracing capabilities. So, you either have to do it manually or search for a third party app (there are quite some threads with suggestions for vectorising and tracing apps/websites in this forums).

[v_kyr]

screenshot.afdesign

 

[iconoclast]

4 hours ago, juliankaye said:

Like what app? that's not helpful at all.

You could use the free vector graphics software Inkscape for it. In most things, it is not as good as Affinity Designer, I think, but it has Autotracing (menu "Path" > "Trace Bitmap"). And that works pretty good.

Be aware to download it from inkscape.org, because there are many fake websites on the net that spread malware (like audacity.de for example - the original site in this case is audacityteam.org). inkscape.org is the original site. You can usually control that by taking a look at the Wikipedia.

[firstdefence]

To do this in Affinity you have to use one of the tools that will create curves such as the pen tool in both Affinity Photo and Affinity Designer, this would be tedious on a shape like this so using a third-party trace app is quicker and easier, you can then tweak the result to suit your expectations.

@v_kyr Kindly made this list of alternatives...

Some desktop app tools

• potrace (Win/Mac/Linux, free)
• DragPotrace (a Mac only GUI frontend for potrace, free)
• autotrace (Win/Mac/Linux, free)
• Inkscape (Win/Mac/Linux, free)
• Intaglio Vectorize (Mac, free)
• MS Expression Design 4 (Win, free to use since longer times since discontinuous)
• Super Vectorizer (Mac, commercial)
• Image Vectorizer (Mac, commercial)
• Vector Magic (Win/Mac, commercial)
• ...and so on...

Some online tracing tools:

• www.autotracer.org
• www.vectorizer.io
• www.vectorization.org
• www.photopea.org
• online-converting.com/autotrace/
• online.rapidresizer.com/tracer.php
• ...and so on...

 

[v_kyr]

The partial tools overview list @firstdefence showed, can be seen here (note that the list is incomplete, there are of course overall more tools available than I listed) ...

• Vectorizing/tracing tools

An adapted Java based freeware Delineate GUI app for accessing/using the "potrace & autotrace" tracers (Win/Mac/Linux) can be found here in forums resources section:

• Delineate - A Raster/Bitmap to SVG Converter

[firstdefence]

There is also an app called VectorStyler that has quite a nice Image trace feature and you can copy and paste the result into Affinity apps.

[PaulEC]

 

6 hours ago, juliankaye said:

How do I turn this graphic into an outline without having to trace it:

I'm probably misunderstanding this, but the question was about turning the graphic into an outline without tracing it, rather than turning it into a vector. If this is the case, then (in Photo) you can just use "Filter" - "Detect" - "Detect Edges", then invert the image.

[ac-13]

I had a go at this with your image using Affinity Photo and came up with the following:

• Apply a High-Pass Live Filter to the original - Radius 0 px, Monochrome unchecked, Blend Mode = Negation

This gave an image mostly mid-grey but with edges, including much of the outer circle, much brighter.

• Merged the image layer with the live filter layer to give a pixel layer

• Applied a Threhold Adjustment Layer to that pixel layer, with the threshold value nudged up minimally to 51% from 50%, Blend Mode = Normal

This gave an image almost entirely Black but with white outline edges.

 

[GarryP]

For a ‘less fussy’ result, if I wanted to get a rasterised outline from this raster image, for this specific image, I would probably use the selection tools as in my attached video.

[h_d]

If you don't need a vector curve but you do want a nice crisp image of the outline:

In Affinity Photo:

Use the Flood Select Tool. Uncheck Contiguous in the toolbar and click in the white area of the image.

Go to the Select menu and choose Outline. Set the width to whatever you need. I chose 2px, centred.

With the selection boundary ("marching ants") still active, from the Layer menu choose New Fill Layer.

Set the colour of the fill layer to black.

In the Layers panel, temporarily hide the original pixel layer and from the Select menu choose deselect:

Choosing a wider Outline and then smoothing the selection before filling will stand up to more magnification. Mine is fine at 100% but the hard edge is stepped if you go much higher.

The outline can be any colour you like, the Fill layer can be rasterised for compositing.

@GarryP beat me to it!

 

 

outline.afphoto

[GarryP]

4 minutes ago, h_d said:

@GarryP beat me to it!

But only by a matter of seconds, and you gave a slightly different solution, and also added smoothing which I failed to mention.

[Gremriel]

50 minutes ago, firstdefence said:

There is also an app called VectorStyler that has quite a nice Image trace feature and you can copy and paste the result into Affinity apps.

 

That is an impressive piece of software.

[firstdefence]

41 minutes ago, Gremriel said:

That is an impressive piece of software.

It can be glitchy at the moment because it's beta but it has some nifty features as well as the image trace, certainly one to keep an eye on.

[firstdefence]

I would have thought this type of image would be used for crafting, maybe @juliankaye can expand on the reason for the request. 

[GaryLearnTech]

I recently came across another (currently) free tool for Mac, iPad and iPhone users - it's called Vectornator and one of its functions is an autotrace tool.  The sample below was produced using the default settings and the default fills and strokes quickly restyled by me.

vn quick conversion.svg

Before you go getting too excited, it seems to require Big Sur for the current version (v4), though they do have a legacy version that works with Catalina available according to the "Why can't I download Vectornator on my Mac?" item in their FAQ.

[Alfred]

1 hour ago, GaryLearnTech said:

I recently came across another (currently) free tool for Mac, iPad and iPhone users - it's called Vectornator and one of its functions is an autotrace tool.

 

[GaryLearnTech]

@Alfred Yeah, I did a quick forum search before posting so I knew it wasn't new around here (not really surprising, since it's now at v4).  I only went ahead since it wasn't mentioned in @v_kyr's list posted higher up here by @firstdefence.

[Alfred]

I’ve just discovered that what was Imaengine is now Vector Q, but the original Imaengine is back as a separate ‘legacy’ app. There’s also a simpler app, Vinilo, from the same developer.

[juliankaye]

Thanks to PaulEC, that's exactly what I was looking for, and thanks all for trying to help, you rock!